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Earnings Call: Q3 2022

Nov 3, 2022

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome, everyone, to BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.'s Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference call. Today's conference call is being recorded for replay purposes. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the company's formal remarks. To ask a question, please press the star key followed by the digit one. I will repeat these instructions before we begin the Q&A session. Now I would like to turn the call over to Katie McGlynn, Director of Investor Relations, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp. Katie, please proceed.

Katie McGlynn
Director of Investor Relations, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thank you, Tamiya. Before we begin, I'll note that this conference call may contain forward-looking statements based on the estimates and assumptions of management at the time of such statements and are not guarantees of future performance. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from those projected. Any forward-looking statements made on this call are made as of today and are subject to change without notice. Additionally, certain information discussed and presented may have been derived from third-party sources and has not been independently verified. Accordingly, we make no representation or warranty with respect to such information. Earlier today, we issued our earnings release for the third quarter ended September 30, 2022. We also posted a supplemental earnings presentation to our website at www.tcpcapital.com.

To view the slide presentation, which we will refer to on today's call, please click on the Investor Relations link and select Events and Presentations. These documents should be reviewed in conjunction with the company's Form 10-Q, which was filed with the SEC earlier today. I will now turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Raj Vig.

Rajneesh Vig
Chairman and CEO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thanks, Katie, and thank you all for joining us today for TCPC's third quarter 2022 earnings call. As usual, I will begin today's call with a few comments on the market environment as well as highlights from our third quarter results. I will then turn the call over to our President and Chief Operating Officer, Phil Tseng, who will provide an update on our portfolio and investment activity. Our CFO, Erik Cuellar, will review our financial results as well as our capital and liquidity positioning in greater detail. I will then conclude with a few closing remarks before we take your questions. The third quarter closed with a continuation of the public market turbulence we have seen across global financial markets this year. It isn't often that both equity and bond markets trade negatively in the same year.

However, a combination of geopolitical uncertainty and central banks' move to raise interest rates to curb the highest levels of inflation in more than 40 years is driving significant volatility. In this environment, direct lending continues to provide a strong value proposition for both investors and borrowers in terms of safer, visible returns and availability of capital solutions, respectively. While we are increasingly cautious in this environment, we take comfort in the fact that the investments in our portfolio are structurally senior. Our loans are primarily first lien and are underwritten with meaningful covenants that provide us with an avenue to constructively engage with our borrowers as challenges are foreseen. This proactive approach, combined with structural seniority, are hallmarks of our strategy and longstanding commitment to strong credit quality and principal protection. Our strategy has always focused on core middle-market businesses in diverse, resilient, and less cyclical industries.

Although large public companies are often perceived to be less risky, the middle market has historically proved to be nimble and resilient during economic downturns. To date, we are seeing our portfolio companies take actions to address the more challenging market environment. We are observing companies reduce marketing budgets and other discretionary spending. Certain companies are also raising capital where needed and focusing on acquisitions that continue to drive scale and reduce costs. Turning to our portfolio, we continuously monitor all of our investments and are actively doing so in this environment. While we are seeing some margin pressure as a result of the inflationary environment and a generally tempered growth outlook, we are very comfortable with our typical position as a senior secured lender and believe our loans are very well covered.

We are also seeing a general ability to pass along cost increases to end customers given inelastic demand for our portfolio company's products and services. Regardless of the market environment, we have always been disciplined with our underwriting standards. We evaluate each borrower's ability to manage in times of duress through both a forward-looking and a historical lens of performance through prior periods of stress or dislocation. Ultimately, we have confidence in our underwriting, our team, and the strength of our diverse portfolio to continue to withstand periods of economic volatility. Let's now turn to our third quarter performance and a few highlights from the quarter. First, we delivered strong Net Investment Income of $0.42 per share. Given the floating-rate nature of our portfolio, our Net Investment Income continued to benefit from the increase in base rates through this year.

Our Net Investment Income again exceeded our third quarter dividend of $0.30 per share, and we are pleased to announce today our board of directors declared a fourth quarter dividend of $0.32 per share, an increase of $0.02 payable on December 30th to shareholders of record on December 16th. We have always emphasized the stability of the dividend and coverage through our recurring Net Investment Income, and our board's decision to increase the dividend is an acknowledgment of the increase in the ongoing earnings power of the portfolio and confidence in maintaining our continuous track record of dividend coverage. Second, NAV increased 1.1% during the quarter driven by net unrealized gains in the portfolio and Net Investment Income in excess of the dividend.

Net unrealized gains were primarily driven by an increase in the value of our investment in 36th Street and partially offset by decreases in the value of our investments in AutoAlert and Securus, as well as the impact of wider market spreads across the portfolio. Third, our portfolio credit quality remained strong, and we had no new non-accruals in the quarter. As of September 30th, non-accruals were just 0.3% of the portfolio at fair value. Our excellent asset quality is both a function of our disciplined and consistent underwriting practices and our vigilant credit monitoring. Fourth, and as Phil will discuss in more detail, the strength of our underwriting platform continued to drive solid investment opportunities that resulted in a total of 17 new investments totaling $48 million.

We also had several prepayments that occurred at the end of the quarter, including the full repayment at par plus accrued of our loan to Jewel. As a result, repayments during the third quarter totaled $170 million, resulting in net dispositions of $122 million. Finally, we are excited to welcome Karen Leets to TCP's board of directors, expanding our board to seven members, including six independent directors. Karen is a senior vice president and treasurer of Baxter International, a multinational healthcare company, and she brings a distinguished background and a wealth of governance experience that will further strengthen our board on behalf of shareholders. TCPC continues to deliver strong results for shareholders. Our total return remains above our cumulative total return hurdle.

As a reminder, TCPC maintains a 7% hurdle rate based on total returns, including realized and unrealized gains and losses on both the income and capital gains component of the incentive fee with a cumulative lookback. Since 2012, when we took TCPC public, we have generated a 10.7% annualized return on invested assets and a total annualized cash return of 9.4%, demonstrating our ability to consistently identify attractive opportunities at premium yields and deliver strong and consistent returns to our shareholders across market cycles. Now, I will turn it over to Phil to discuss our investment activity and portfolio positioning.

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thanks, Raj. Despite the public market volatility that is driving uncertainty in the capital markets, we continue to capitalize on the scale of the broader BlackRock U.S. Private Capital platform and breadth of our team's experience to identify attractive investment opportunities in this environment. At quarter end, our portfolio had a fair market value of approximately $1.7 billion. 87% of our investments were senior secured debt spread across a wide range of industries, providing portfolio diversity and minimizing concentration risk. As we previously noted, our portfolio is weighted towards companies with established business models in less cyclical industries. The portfolio at quarter end consisted of investments in 132 companies, an all-time high for this portfolio. As the chart on the left side of slide 6 of the presentation illustrates, our recurring income is distributed broadly across our portfolio and is not reliant on income from any one company.

In fact, more than 90% of our portfolio companies each contribute less than 2% to our recurring income. 84% of our debt investments are first lien, providing significant downside protection, and 95% of our debt investments are floating rate, providing an important benefit in this rising rate environment. Moving on to our investment activity. As one of a small group of reputable lenders capable of providing complete and customized financing solutions, we focus on transactions where our U.S. Private Capital team acts as a lead, co-lead, or part of a small club of lenders. This enables us to negotiate deal terms and conditions that we believe provide meaningful downside protection. These include substantial collateral and tailored covenant packages that are important, especially in periods of economic volatility like we are in today and expect to be in for the foreseeable future.

In addition, our industry specialization, which our borrowers value, bolsters our ability to assess and effectively mitigate risk in our underwriting and when negotiating terms in the credit documents. We've delivered for borrowers and deal sources on over 1,000 transactions across the U.S. Private Capital platform through our more than two decades of lending to middle-market companies. Our longstanding relationships cultivated over those two decades, coupled with the power of the BlackRock platform, provide us with an advantage in sourcing and identifying attractive investment opportunities. We also believe that our ability to source from multiple channels and our ability to lend in unique or less understood situations are benefiting our pipeline of investment opportunities in the current environment. While we've been actively deploying capital in this market, we maintain a very disciplined approach to investing. General market activity has slowed relative to the record levels in 2021.

However, we continue to see strong new deal activity in areas such as add-on acquisitions and opportunities from non-sponsored deal sources. TCPC invested $48 million in third quarter, primarily in 17 investments, including loans to 14 new portfolio companies and three existing ones. In terms of dollars invested, 60% of total investments in third quarter came from our existing portfolio companies. Follow-on investments in existing holdings continue to be an important source of opportunity, accounting for nearly 50% of total dollars deployed over the last 12 months. We believe this incumbency is an important advantage in sourcing investments that will only increase if economic conditions deteriorate further. These are companies we already know well and understand well and, therefore, are comfortable making these follow-on investments. TCPC's largest investment during the third quarter was a senior secured first lien term loan to Achieve.

Achieve is a founder-led personal finance company that helps consumers overcome and reduce outstanding debt burdens. Given the complexity of the transaction and our team's experience lending to financial services companies, our team was selected to lead this transaction. This financing will be used to pay down existing debt and support Achieve's growth initiatives. Our second largest investment in the quarter was a senior secured first lien term loan to Anaconda. With over 29 million active users, including more than 700 enterprise customers, Anaconda is a scaled global data science and machine learning platform. BlackRock served as the sole lender on this transaction, which will go toward refinancing existing debt as well as to fund Anaconda's growth. As Raj mentioned, new investments in the third quarter were offset by several meaningful payoffs, including Dude Solutions, Foursquare, Jewel, and MetricStream.

In light of the challenges Jewel continues to face, we are thrilled that we were able to opportunistically exit our loan at par. Total dispositions and repayments totalled $170 million. The overall effective yield on our debt portfolio rose meaningfully from 9.8% as of June 30th to 11.3%, reflecting the benefit of higher rates during this quarter. Importantly, the full benefit of rates in effect at September 30th will be reflected in our fourth quarter results, given the majority of our loans reset quarterly. Investments in new portfolio companies during the quarter had a weighted average effective yield of 11.3%, exceeding the 9.9% weighted average yield on exit positions. Although the private markets tend to be slower to react to changes in the market environment, we are seeing a shift toward a more lender-friendly environment with improvements in pricing and terms relative to six to nine months ago.

We continue to invest selectively, maintaining our underwriting discipline and being mindful of this inflationary environment. We focus on companies with established business models that are well positioned to succeed throughout economic cycles, and we emphasize the companies that have significant pricing power to pass on increasing input costs, including the cost of capital. It's also important to note that we did not underwrite to perfection, but build in sufficient buffer to ensure companies can withstand higher costs and changes in the market environment without impairing their ability to service our loan. While we're seeing a slowdown in deal activity relative to the flurry of deals we saw in the fourth quarter of last year, our pipeline remains healthy. The yields on investments in our pipeline are generally in line with our current portfolio, and to date, we have had limited prepayment income in the fourth quarter.

I'll now turn it over to Erik to walk through our financial results as well as our capital and liquidity positioning.

Erik L. Cuellar
CFO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thank you, Phil. As Raj noted, our Net Investment Income in the third quarter benefited from the increase in base rate so far this year, as well as $0.06 from repayment income. Net Investment Income of $0.42 was up 14% from the second quarter and more than 30% from one year ago. Net Investment Income again exceeded our second quarter dividend of $0.30 per share. We're committed to paying a sustainable dividend that is fully covered by Net Investment Income, as we have done consistently over the last 10+ years. Today, as Raj noted, we declared a fourth quarter dividend of $0.32 per share, increasing our dividend by $0.02 per share. Investment income for the third quarter was $0.83 per share. This included recurring cash interest of $0.67, recurring discount and fee amortization of $0.03, and PIK income of $0.03.

Notably, our PIK income remains lower than our historical average. Investment income also included $0.03 of dividend income, $0.01 of other income, and $0.06 from accelerated OID and exit fees. As a reminder, we amortized upfront economics of the last fund investment rather than recognizing all of it at the time the investment is made. Operating expenses for the third quarter were $0.32 per share and included interest and other debt expenses of $0.18 per share. Incentive fees in the quarter totaled $5.2 million or $0.09 per share. Net realized and unrealized gains in the third quarter totaled $1.8 million or $0.03 per share and were driven primarily by $1.6 million of net unrealized gains on the portfolio. These net unrealized gains in the third quarter included an $18.8 million increase in the value of our investment in 36th Street.

Unrealized gains in the third quarter also included a $3.3 million reversal of prior unrealized losses on our investment in Jewel as we exited our investment at par during the third quarter. Unrealized gains were partially offset by a $5.9 million decrease in the value of our investment in AutoAlert and a $2 million mark-to-market decline in the value of our investment in Avetta Technologies, as well as the impact of wider market spreads across our portfolio. The net increase in analysis for the quarter was $26.2 million or $0.45 per share. Substantially all of our investments are valued every quarter using prices provided by independent third-party sources. These include quotation services and independent valuation services. This process is also subject to rigorous oversight, including backtesting of every disposition against our valuations.

Our credit quality remains strong, with non-accrual loans at quarter end limited to two portfolio companies that represent just 30 basis points of the portfolio at fair value and 50 basis points at cost. Before turning to our liquidity, a quick comment on our fourth quarter earnings expectations. While we don't provide forward-looking guidance, it is important to note that our third quarter NII benefited from $0.06 of non-recurring items. Additionally, while we expect to further benefit from the increase in base rates, we also had a significant amount of paydowns that occurred at the end of the third quarter that reduced leverage and the size of our portfolio going into the fourth quarter. Turning to our liquidity, we ended the quarter with total liquidity of $351 million relative to our total investments of $1.7 billion. This included available leverage of $246 million and cash of $106 million.

Unfunded loan commitments to portfolio companies at quarter end equalled 7% of total investments or approximately $124 million, of which only $20 million were revolver commitments. Our diverse and flexible leverage program includes two low-cost credit facilities, two unsecured note issuances, and an SBA program. Notably, our unsecured debt continues to be investment-grade rated by both Moody's and Fitch. Given the modest size of each of our debt issuances, we are not overly reliant on any single source of financing, and our maturities remain well laddered. Additionally, due in part to the opportunistic add-on bond instruments that we executed in the second half of last year, in which we took advantage of an attractive financing environment at the time, we are comfortable with our current mix of secured and unsecured financing and do not have any immediate financing needs.

Also, given our higher percentage of fixed-rate borrowings, the combined weighted average interest rate on our outstanding borrowings increased only modestly to 3.41% from 3.26% at the end of 2021. Now, I'll turn the call back over to Raj.

Rajneesh Vig
Chairman and CEO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thanks, Erik. Despite volatility in the broader markets, we are leveraging the power and comprehensiveness of the BlackRock platform and our team's deep experience to selectively deploy capital on favorable terms. Our liquidity is strong, and we have ample dry powder to deploy incremental capital where we see the opportunity. Our investment team's breadth of expertise consists of performing direct lending and special situations investing, a combination that is particularly well-suited for the current environment. While we remain disciplined in our investment approach and focus on credit quality, we have been able to continually build and diversify the portfolio. The consistency of our performance demonstrates both the efforts of our experienced team and the value of our risk-reward proposition. With that, operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator

Absolutely. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason at all you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you're using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We will pause here briefly as questions are registered. The first question comes from Kevin Fultz with JMP Securities. Please proceed.

Kevin Fultz
VP and Equity Research Analyst, JMP Securities

Hi. Good morning and congratulations on a really nice quarter. My first question is a platform level one on your deal selectivity rate and deal volume. Could you remind me what your historical average deal selectivity rate is and how that has trended recently? Secondly, could you give us an idea on the total dollar value or number of deals you review on an annual basis?

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question, Kevin. This is Phil. Our selectivity rate generally ranges anywhere between 4%-6% on any given year, and that's consistent with the current environment. We'll evaluate anywhere between 1,000-1,200 deals a year on average. Our pipeline today continues to be healthy. It's not quite as robust as you can imagine versus, let's say, 12 months ago, given the environment around refinancings and M&A generally. For us, it doesn't take a lot for us to stay busy. We have quite a wide funnel, and we always strive to do so based on our sources of deals. It's a very wide set of channels, not just sponsor, but also very much focused on a non-sponsored channel where we find real thriving founder or family-owned businesses that make fantastic credits.

It's also important to keep in mind that quite a number of our pipeline opportunities come through our existing portfolio. This past quarter happened to be quite high at roughly 60%. Generally, anywhere between 40%-50% comes from our existing portfolio, which is certainly deal flow that we like because we know those businesses well. We have a great relationship with management. We've seen management execute. If we're comfortable, then that's putting good money after good portfolio companies.

Kevin Fultz
VP and Equity Research Analyst, JMP Securities

Okay. That's all really helpful, Phil. My follow-up is around how you're thinking about leverage in the current environment. Now, I realize you had some sizable payments during the quarter. On the other side, origination activity was fairly light. I'm curious if that was intentional deleveraging of the portfolio or more so driven by the attractiveness of investment opportunities that you were seeing in the markets.

Erik L. Cuellar
CFO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Yeah, Kevin, this is Erik. I'll take that. In terms of the pace of the repayments, that's probably the one factor that's hardest to predict. As I mentioned, it was elevated during Q3. In terms of the leverage level, we're comfortable letting the portfolio shrink. Having said that, it is lower than it's been over the last few quarters. We like that it gives us the flexibility to deploy if we see attractive opportunities.

Kevin Fultz
VP and Equity Research Analyst, JMP Securities

Okay. That's helpful, and I appreciate your time this morning.

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thank you.

Erik L. Cuellar
CFO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thank you, Kevin.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ryan Lynch with KBW. You may proceed.

Ryan Lynch
Managing Director, KBW

Hey. Good afternoon. First question I had, you mentioned a $19 million unrealized gain on 36th Street Capital. I'd love to just hear what drove that increase in that valuation.

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Sure. Thanks for the question. It was two factors, really. Again, just a reminder that all of this is through third parties. One is the group has just been performing in the investment very well, and we're very pleased with that. That also accreted to a better multiple relative to the comps from the valuation providers. They get more credit just because of the performing and the consistency of that performance. As part of it, there's also a benefit based on some pending strategic initiatives that are at the company level. We hope to have more detail to talk to you about that with clarity soon, hopefully next quarter. It was a combination of just current market valuation and also company-specific strategic benefits.

Ryan Lynch
Managing Director, KBW

Okay. The other one I had was, what is your current weighted average interest coverage on your portfolio, and how has that trended, let's say, over the last six months?

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Yeah. I think it's strong. We don't really necessarily give specific numbers because there's a lot of variances in the portfolio that can make an average a little misleading. I would say on the cash flow coverage on our portfolio, it's roughly 2.5 x and has trended up. Part of that is where we have covenants. Many of them will have step-downs that require people to or in the case of a coverage ratio, step-ups that will require people to have credit improvement. Also to the extent our companies, even if they're growing slower, they're still growing or we're stabilizing and seeing a benefit of deleveraging that accretes to the coverage. Obviously, part of the offset is the rate increase, but the number applicable to cash flow coverage is roughly in the 2.5 x range.

Ryan Lynch
Managing Director, KBW

Okay. That's helpful. My final question was just on dividend and dividend coverage. You guys obviously raised the dividend this quarter or excuse me, for the upcoming fourth quarter. If I look at that coverage relative to Q3 earnings, which you did say there were a couple of one-time items, there was $0.06 of kind of accelerated prepayments versus maybe $0.03 in the last quarter. That was kind of helped through third-quarter earnings as well as some late-quarter repayments, which could pressure earnings. You still had about over 130% dividend coverage, which feels extremely high. Can you walk through the thought process of the dividend increase and how you chose the level that you increased it to, and where do you guys want to be running at from a dividend coverage standpoint?

Because it feels like there's a lot of room based on the current trajectory of earnings versus where the dividend's set at.

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Yeah. I appreciate that, and let me try to provide some color. There's no secret to it. I think, first and foremost, we have stated very clearly that we believe it's important to maintain a stable and well-covered dividend. The factors that have been driving the dividend increase through this year are obviously reference rate, SOFR in most cases, increases that have been flowing through on a quarterly basis and continue to flow through. We don't know where SOFR goes. We know that we benefit as it increases. It feels like maybe there's more room or it's not coming down necessarily or rapidly, but we're not prognosticators on rate. At the same time, we are now seeing, as we invest the marginal dollar, the benefit of investing in higher-returning investments, including some spread benefits, being at worst stable, if not increasing.

I think we tried and then the third thing, obviously, is just the environment. We're very cautious. We're pleased that we have chosen to stay very defensive both by industry and by structure coming into this environment. I think we've always been cautious, but increasingly so. To the extent there's a view that this is lower for longer, there's just an importance of having a continued buffer to provide that strong and stable and well-covered dividend, even though at the moment, there might be some additional room. I think we would rather take it up and have confidence that it's well-covered and stable and then continue to reassess as the environment clarifies than do something that requires a reversal or puts pressure on our coverage and our shareholders' view of the confidence in our dividend level.

I think we took all that into account, had a healthy discussion with our board, and came to the conclusion that the $0.02 was a good raise for this quarter, maybe at the start, but at the current environment, it feels that we were sticking to our sort of template and our thinking on how we want to level set and provide dividend and benefits to shareholders.

Ryan Lynch
Managing Director, KBW

Okay. Fair enough on that discussion. That's all my questions I had. Nice quarter, and congrats on the exit of Jewel.

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. As a quick reminder, if you would like to ask a question, it is star one on your telephone keypad. The next comes from Robert Dodd with Raymond James. Please proceed.

Robert Dodd
Director, Specialty Finance, Raymond James

Hi. Just going back to kind of the leverage question, I mean, obviously, you've got available liquidity, available capital now. You're saying terms and structures do seem to be moving in a more lender-friendly direction, and the pipeline's a little bit more maybe modest today, certainly than it was a year ago. How do you feel? How should we expect you to kind of utilize that available liquidity? I mean, obviously, you'll be opportunistic, but are you going to be a little bit more content to wait, to hold that? Low leverage in this environment's not a bad thing, especially with rates helping earnings anyway. Or are you expecting to leverage back up in the relatively near term or maybe wait and take advantage of maybe even more lender-friendly terms at some basis?

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Good question. I'll try to provide a little more color. I think part of it, just keep in mind, is the level and the timing of the paydown was pretty back-loaded, including essentially on the last day of the quarter. There was an impact that just given the cadence of a typical deal, it's much quicker to have it pay down than to redeploy into the right types of deals. There's just a processing the new capital cadence and timing. That said, it is great to have capital and available capital to invest in this environment. We're seeing a lot of good opportunities. Part of it, I think the answer is partly a bit of both.

We will expect to utilize the available leverage to do what we think are very attractive deals with maintaining a defensive stance in the industries and the structures that we have worked thus far through other market environments. Whether we decide to maintain some buffer as we approach really the rating guidelines is a function of both those guidelines that we have to stay on top of and also our view that we don't need to stretch in any fashion because the returns are quite compelling even at this level. The additional benefit of some leverage is something that we anticipate we'll be able to utilize. I think it'll be a balancing act. I don't think there's any hard and fast target.

We expect it to go up just because it came down so quickly at the end of the quarter, and we expect that there'll be an additional benefit for the releveraging to the extent to the level that we're comfortable with as the environment dictates, with a clear cap on not exceeding any investment-grade thresholds, as those thresholds, whether they move around or not, TBD.

Robert Dodd
Director, Specialty Finance, Raymond James

That's exactly the point. Have you received any indications maybe from the rating agencies and I'm not necessarily just talking about you, obviously? These would be industry kind of indications about them wanting to see lower leverage at this point in the cycle in order to maintain. Obviously, you want to keep the investment-grade rating, and I expect you will. Has there been any preliminary feedback from the rating agencies about concern in that regard?

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

There hasn't, to our knowledge or in our case. I don't want to speak for others, but I don't say that with any implication that that's been a message conveyed. Again, we're in sort of a new environment. I think we're just trying to be cognizant and as informed as we need to be. To answer your question, no, there hasn't been any feedback on that.

Robert Dodd
Director, Specialty Finance, Raymond James

Good. Thank you for that. Sorry.

Erik L. Cuellar
CFO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Yeah. Robert, I was going to say they recently issued a report on the sector, and they didn't change any of their limits. Having said that, normally, they look at longer-term changes in the environment before they change those limits.

Robert Dodd
Director, Specialty Finance, Raymond James

Got it. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Christopher Nolan with Ladenburg Thalmann. You may proceed.

Christopher Nolan
Managing Director, Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

Hey, guys. How much spillover income do you guys have?

Erik L. Cuellar
CFO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

It's significant. It is about $1.17 on a cumulative basis, $1.17 per share. On a book basis, on a tax basis, it's significantly less given the tax treatment primarily on prepayment income, which gets capital treatment for tax purposes versus ordinary on a book basis.

Christopher Nolan
Managing Director, Equity Research, Ladenburg Thalmann

Gotcha. I guess a general question. Last quarter, we were talking about the effect of the supply chain constraints and so forth. Any update to that? I mean, are your companies seeing better supply chain, or is it still the same issues as before? That's it for me. Thanks.

Philip Tseng
President and COO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Yeah. Thanks for the question. I think last quarter, the commentary was around acknowledging that there are supply chain issues, broadly speaking. However, given our focus at an industry level and a company level, it's less relevant for our portfolio. It's something we have to be aware of and monitor in a broader context. We're really investing, for the most part, in asset-light, high IP, high gross margin type cash flow businesses. It's less of something we see in the portfolio but something that we observe in the market, just to be clear.

Operator

Thank you. There appear to be no further questions in the queue, so I will now pass it back to Raj Vig.

Rajneesh Vig
Chairman and CEO, BlackRock TCP Capital Corp.

Thank you. We appreciate your participation on today's call. I would like to thank our team for all the continued hard work and dedication. I would also like to thank our shareholders, our capital partners, and our business partners for their confidence and their continued support. Thanks for joining us. This concludes today's call.

Operator

This concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect from the.

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